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DNR

Georgia part of program to bolster eagle estimates

Most states, including Georgia, have been aerially monitoring their nesting bald eagles for the past two to three decades, work that has documented an amazing population recovery.

The effort involves returning to known territories each nesting season to check the status of each territory, as well as investigate promising reports of new nesting activity and search for nests in good habitat along the way. This collective data set was the evidence needed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to support decisions to down-list, then de-list, the species from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

However, some unknown number of nests remain undetected within the many square miles of suitable nesting habitat that are not covered by this method. Although eagles are still protected by other federal and state laws, the Fish and Wildlife Service has implemented a post-delisting monitoring program to more accurately determine the actual nationwide population and enable detection of significant changes in that number. This effort requires additional searches of suitable habitat within random blocks in order to get an idea about the proportion of actual nests that are being detected through standard monitoring techniques.

This nesting season, Georgia was assigned five blocks, each a 10-kilometer square, in the coastal zone where our eagle nesting density is greatest. DNR observers teamed with a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist/pilot to conduct searches by plane of these blocks on Feb. 24 and 25. One new nest was discovered in Camden County.

Biologists will be checking all known Georgia nests this month, including the newly discovered one, to determine productivity.

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The Zahnd Natural Area in Walker County covers some 1,380 acres of the Cumberland Plateau physiographic region. Zahnd sits on the eastern edge of Lookout Mountain and across McLemore Cove from Pigeon Mountain.

Kristina Summers, a senior public relations and information specialist with the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division, attended much of the fourth annual Teacher Conservation Workshop held June 23-27 at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center in Mansfield. Here is her in-the-field glimpse of the workshop and participants adventures around the state.

Much has been written of the longleaf pinelands of South Georgia and the fact that most have disappeared through conversion to pine plantations, development, cropland and other overall changes in land use. Yet an even scarcer habitat than a longleaf pine forest is a seepage bog with acres and acres of pitcherplants. Doerun Pitcherplant Bog Natural Area has both – intact longleaf-wiregrass uplands and acres and acres of pitcherplants!